y by day and night and thrusting superfluous services
and advice upon the nurse, she decided she would not stand being
"bossed by a nigger," and took a train for the East. Then, Mrs.
Fortescue determined to return to first principles and imported from
Virginia, at great cost and trouble, a colored mammy, most capable and
experienced. But the complications with Kettle grew more acute, and
the mammy, in a blaze of indignation, took even stronger ground than
the trained nurse, and declared she "warn't goin' to be bossed by no
black nigger." When she had shaken the snow of Fort Blizzard from her
feet, there was nothing left but to hand the baby over to Kettle and
Mrs. McGillicuddy, as coadjutor. After tending her own brood and
keeping a sharp eye on Anna Maria McGillicuddy, her eldest daughter,
who had reached the stage of beaux, and cooking the best meals for the
Sergeant that any sergeant could ask, Mrs. McGillicuddy still had time
to lend a helping hand with the After-Clap.

Kettle and Mrs. McGillicuddy had been good friends ever since the time,
nineteen years before, when she had become the little Sergeant's
two-hundred-pound bride. But in the twenty years, during which Kettle
had never left "Miss Betty" and Sergeant McGillicuddy had been Colonel
Fortescue's factotum, there had been a continual guerilla warfare
between Kettle and the Sergeant. The Sergeant alluded scornfully to
Kettle as "the naygur," while with Kettle the Sergeant was always "ole
McGillicuddy." Mrs. McGillicuddy was invariably on Kettle's side, and
one blast upon her bugle horn was worth ten thousand men in what Kettle
called his "collusions," with the Sergeant. Sergeant McGillicuddy had
performed prodigies of valor in fights with Indians; he had been
mentioned in general order, along with Colonel Fortescue, and was
commonly reputed to fear neither the devil nor the doctor. But he was
under iron discipline with Mrs. McGillicuddy, and Kettle, like
everybody else, knew it.

While the After-Clap was disporting himself with the articles on the
Sergeant's desk, under the full glare of the electric light, a shadow
passed the window. The next minute Sergeant McGillicuddy entered, the
lion in him aroused by the sight of the liberties taken with his desk.

"I say, you naygur," snorted the Sergeant wrathfully, "you take that
baby off my desk and out of this office. The C. O's office ain't no
day nursery."

"You go to grass," replied Kettle boldly.